


what the little dog saw

by claysalive (Icarus_is_flying)



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Wuffles is a little anxious and protective, all my fics are swamp dragon adjacent now I guess, set a little after The Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29600964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icarus_is_flying/pseuds/claysalive
Summary: Wuffles has seen a lot of strange things in his time as the Patrician's dog. But he has never seen this scaly thing about his own size, and it is sitting much too close to his god's desk.
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari & Wuffles
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	what the little dog saw

Many things came in and out of the Oblong Office. Staff and visitors and annoyances, and Wuffles the terrier kept an eye on it all from beneath the desk. Mostly he slept and woke only when he was needed for a scratch behind the ear when his god, Lord Vetinari, was between important documents. It had not been long since the last big excitement (and what an excitement it had been), but the piles of important documents had gotten taller while Wuffles was riding around Ankh-Morpork in nice Ole Ron's coat. Now his god was working very hard to shrink the piles again. As always, the little terrier kept him company.

Wuffles walked a circle on his dog bed, treading the stuffing into the correct places for his fourth nap of the day. An elderly dog needed his sleep. It built fortitude for walks, which Wuffles had every evening after supper. Sometimes he was accompanied by his god and other times by Drumknott, the clerk who did not like his pencils chewed. After the excitment, Drumknott had not been well enough for walks for a few days, so Wuffles had brought him a very nice stick from the garden as a consolation. The clerk had patted him very gently in thanks. 

It had been very exciting--cruel strangers in the office, too many gods, too much upset. The memory made Wuffles' ears prick up, and he nearly growled before he recalled that everything was all right. His god and Drumknott had recovered from their injuries, and life was back to its happy routine of naps and walks and dinners. He pushed his dog bed a little closer to his god's chair, just to be certain.

Perhaps he would bring Drumknott another stick tonight. A nice one with leaves.

A light rap came at the door, and Wuffles paused in his turning. 

Paper shuffled overhead. "Come in."

Drumknott opened the office door. "Commander Vimes to see you, sir."

"Send him in." 

Drumknott went away and in came one of the good guests: Ah Vimes, the commander who smelt of cigars and very old boots. 

"I presume you have an update in the investigation?"

"Yes, sir. Mr. de Worde helped us clear up a few things..."

Ah Vimes and Vetinari continued their dull human conversation, so Wuffles stamped the last of the dog bed stuffing into place and settled down for his nap. 

Then a slow slinking motion caught his eye, and he raised his head. 

There was a snake on the floor. Or rather, a snake with a great many joints—all elbows and spikes and great eyes like marbles that peered around the office. Snakes lived in the garden, or very deep down in the dungeon. Wuffles had caught a few in his younger days, and he had dropped them at his god's feet as gifts, but this, he was nearly certain, was not a snake. It scratched its long neck with its hind foot and shook itself in a very un-snakelike manner.

Wuffles did not know where this new visitor had come from, but now it stood on the rug much too close to the desk. He did not like it. 

Above, his god and Ah Vimes talked on. His god did not seem to have noticed the intruder, but that was all right. Wuffles had. 

He got to his feet.

The intruder was about his size. As a rule, Wuffles did not like things his size--not the birds, not the rabbits, not the fish in the long, thin pond that splashed him when he tried to drink. More often than not, they meant trouble, and he had had more than enough of that. The terrier sniffed. This intruder smelled like the hearth in the kitchen after the cook threw rotten eggs into it. He sniffed again. A faint underpinning of shoe grease. 

Wuffles did not like it. It did _not_ belong in the Oblong Office.

The scaled intruder swiveled its head and fixed both eyes on him. Wuffles bared his teeth, and the intruder sniffed back, huge nostrils flaring. If it came much closer to him or to his god, Wuffles was going to bite it. He was good at biting, and he would not let it hurt his god. He growled. 

His god stopped in the middle of a sentence. His chair creaked as he leaned back to look under the desk, but Wuffles kept his eyes on the intruder. The intruder stared back. 

“Commander,” said Vetinari. 

“Sir?”

“What is _that_?"

The commander looked down, looked up, looked down again. Then he sighed, and his breath smelled smoky like the thing on the floor. “It’s a swamp dragon, sir.”

A dragon. Wuffles growled. He dimly remembered the last dragon in the Palace. He did not like dragons.

“Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What is it doing in my office?”

“Sorry, sir. Must have followed me from Pseudopolis Yard.” Ah Vimes bent down and grabbed the intruder by its scale scruff, and it went limp in his hold. Wuffles barked to make sure the swamp dragon knew how bad it had been. The vacant expression in its eyes was replaced with a curled lip and a new acrid smell, and the scales on its long body did an interesting ripple. 

“Oh dear," said his god. "Vimes, I think--”

“Oh, bug--” said Ah Vimes at the same time. 

There was a bit of a scuffle that ended with the window thrown wide open and the commander holding the swamp dragon outside as far as he could reach. It sneezed fire and made an atrocious rattling noise for a few moments, while Wuffles barked and barked and barked. When the fire subsided, the dragon deflated to look more like a green chainmail sock. It smelled like burnt coal. 

There was an awkward silence, his god with his cane beside the desk, Ah Vimes with a smoking dragon in one hand. Wuffles barked once more and sat down. 

Ah Vimes cleared his throat. “If that’s all, sir, I think I'll be taking this back to the Yard.”

His god sat back down in his chair. “An excellent idea. Don't let me detain you."

The commander carried the intruder out of the office. As the door closed, Wuffles barked a final _and stay out!_ then settled back on his haunches and huffed, confident the dragon would not make another appearance. He had saved the day. Again. He thumped his tail on the floor.

The door opened again, and Drumknott poked his head into the room. “Is everything all right, sir? I heard shouting just now.”

"Only a small kerfuffle with a swamp dragon. Everything is quite all right."

The familiar clink of glass caught Wuffles' attention. Intruder forgotten, he spun around and trundled back to his god’s feet. Vetinari set a red biscuit on the floor and scratched the dog behind his ears, laughing under his breath. Yes. It seemed that things really were all right after all.

**Author's Note:**

> If I think about the conversation Drumknott and Vetinari must have had after what happened in the Truth, I'll feel too many emotions, so here is Wuffles loosely based on my mother's little dog instead.


End file.
